I’ve enjoyed Derek Webb‘s music for years. It’s weird. While I’d never consider myself a die-hard fan, I tallied it up the other day and I’ve been to more Derek Webb concerts – by a large margin – than any other musician. When it comes to the repeats, I tally at Anathallo – 2 shows. Sigur Ros – 2 shows. Waterdeep – 2 shows. Better Than Ezra (yep) – 2 shows. Derek Webb – 20+. How did this even happen? Well, the man makes consistently good music. And while I enjoy concerts, I mostly go to ’em when others ask me to come along. I have lots of friends who ask me to come along with them to Derek’s shows. I always say yes.

(Ah, the memories: A Caedmon’s show in the late ’90s and a DW solo show in the early 2000s, both at my alma mater Berry. The road trip with my buddy Johnny to Jacksonville. A gazillion shows at Eddie’s Attic. One in Stone Mountain. One at the Lincoln Theater here in Raleigh, when DW & I were both new daddies, in June 2007…)

So it was fun, a few weeks ago, when I got to make the trek to Haw River, North Carolina, and sit down with Derek while he was on tour with Jars of Clay. Derek is a huge supporter of this little (!) gig I’m working called the Wild Goose Festival, and (as usual – lol) he had plenty to say. The result is this video, below, where he shares his passion for all things Goose. Please watch it and pass it along to your music-loving friends!

Join Derek at the Goose where he’ll sing and play and initiate some blessedly uncomfortable conversations. Oh – and this is the final week when Advance Tickets to the Goose can be had – go ahead and order them here if you haven’t already. See a more ‘official’ bio of Derek over at the Wild Goose Festival blog today.

Finally, I leave you with some Feedback, which we played during communion at Trinity’s Place yesterday.

A few weeks ago, Rob was in Atlanta as part of a short tour for his uber-controversial book Love Wins. He stopped by the nationally-syndicated Day1 studio to do this in-depth interview with show host Peter Wallace:

While in the ATL, it worked out for me to sit in the studio with the good Mr. Wallace and share why the Goose is so important to me, and why it just might be important to – dahn dahn dahn! – the future shape of North American spirituality. No really. Why? You’ll just have to watch & see! But seriously – I’d love your feedback on what we’re discussing here.

Finally, you see that t-shirt I’m wearing? It’s from the local Raleigh-based Guru Guitar, a kickin’ guitar shop that serves the Triangle area and beyond. I do mean ‘beyond.’ My buddy, Guru co-owner Eugene Reinert, crafts his custom-made Rhino Guitars for musicians the world over. So if you’re in the market for peerless sound, come on by. Then you & I could have coffee next-door at Cup-A-Joe afterward.

What I appreciate about Brian is how he’s always wondering, always thinking, always learning and growing – and doing so with transparency, and humility. I was a good deal more immature and argumentative before I encountered his Christ-like example nearly a decade ago.

What follows are four meaty pieces that have come out from the New Kind of Christianity author in the past month or so, two of them interviews. Here they are, with an excerpt from each.

By distinguishing some theology with a modifier – feminist, black, Latin American, eco-, post-colonial, or indigenous, we are playing into the idea that these theologies are special, different – boutique theologies if you will.

But what if we tried to subvert this deception? What if we started calling standard, unmodified theology chauvinist theology, or white theology, or consumerist or colonial or Greco-Roman theology?

The covert assumption behind the modifier post-colonial thus becomes overt, although it is generally more obliquely and politely stated than this:
Standard, normative, historic, so-called orthodox Christian theology has been a theology of empire, a theology of colonialism, a theology that powerful people used as a tool to achieve and defend land theft, exploitation, domination, superiority, and privilege.

Here’s what I think. First of all, in the Bible, salvation is by grace, and everybody gets judged by works. So, I think the mercy of God comes to all and the judgment of God comes to all. But, the universalism that I think is far more important in the Bible is not “What happens to everybody when they die?” I think it’s the question, “Does everybody learn to see the image of God in other human beings, or do they continue to divide the world between us and them, and ‘us’ is always the ones that God loves, and ‘them’ is somehow always the other.” And my concern is that by making the big issue who is the inside us and who is the outside them, by doing that, we violate a more important ethical universalism of seeing the image of God in every person.

(For more development of this line of thinking, with the biblical exegesis and theology to support it, see Brian’s novel The Last Word and the Word After That, a compelling narrative to which I was able to make modest editorial contributions back in the day!)

Let me say something on Christian identity. Right now I think we have two unacceptable options. On one extreme, there’s a strong Christian identity that defines itself as an antagonist toward other faiths. It says, in essence, “We will convert you if we can, and if we can’t, we will resist you and limit your influence. In any case, we will outlast you. Resistance is ultimately futile—you will either be assimilated or punished for failing to convert. For us to thrive, you cannot thrive.” It’s not said that overtly, but I think this is the underlying assumption that motivates a lot of the public behavior we’re seeing today.

On the other extreme, there’s a weak Christian identity that reacts against the first one and says, “Oh, whatever you believe is fine. All beliefs are good. One religion is as good as another.” If the former approach threatens the existence of other people, this one threatens the existence of Christian faith, because it doesn’t offer a good reason to take the faith seriously. Of course, on the line between these extremes, there are any number of variations.

Through the Wild Goose Festival, I hope that several streams of Christian faith and life here in North America can come together in a fresh and new way…I see Wild Goose as uniting these sometimes-disparate spiritual kin into a powerful movement of faith, hope and love. I hope you join me there…

I hope so too! The Wild Goose Festival is reaching critical mass, as volunteers from across the continent are working hard to make next June a special time that outlasts the weekend itself. If you’re interested to learn more, check out Brian’s post and the website in general at WildGooseFestival.org; if you’re on Facebook you can “Like” the Goose, and you can RSVP at the Event Page and become the first to know when tickets go on sale. Finally, if you’re on Twitter you can chase the Goose @WildGooseFest.

This conversation is like a small tasty morsel of the feast that was this ‘conference.’ I use air quotes because, truth be told, I didn’t attend too many of the actual sessions; raging ADD aside, there were just so many people I’ve known for years online, whom I was able to meet in-person for the first time. It was like a “family reunion in heaven” – people whom you’re simultaneously meeting for the first time, but whom you’ve also known forever. (I also had a great time with my Atlanta and Cobb Emergent Cohort peeps, and even a lovely Augusta representative – getting to see them is too long and far-between!) It was a rag-tag conglomeration of emergents and outlaw preachers and missionals and mainliners and meditators and Wild Goosers and Big Tent-makers and organics, all coming from every denomination (or lack thereof) under the sun – lots o’ variety in God’s great big family.

This event was very well-timed for me, personally. I’m at something of a crossroads, both vocationally (great developments, some of which I’ve already shared, as well as some scary-awesome challenges!) and health-wise (I really will get to posting about this in the near-term future); during large swaths of TransFORM I felt quite literally like I was going nuts. And yet the warmth and unconditional presence of the TransFORM folks carried with them the distinct aroma of Jesus. There was a palpable sense of Christ and his Kingdom throughout the weekend, on display in the kindness and dizzying diversity of those present – women and men; black, white, Latino and Asian; Quaker and Wesleyan, Pentecostal and Catholic, Baptist and Reformed.

TransFORM: The Event is but a subset of TransFORM: the Network – a collection of church-planting and pneumatic-community enthusiasts who color outside the lines. If this is you, you should connect with us. As I like to say, there’s more than meets the eye with TransFORM. (Cue groans)

Chris Rosebrough (note: Chris, from Pirate Christian Radio & Fighting for the Faith, is not a fan. He’s more of a loyal critic, and drove all the way out from Indiana for the main purpose of critiquing. But we love him anyway!)